Should You Monitor Employee Internet Usage?

Internet Usage Is Growing

There is little doubt that the internet is an important part of daily life for most employees, no matter what your field of work is. Today email and internet research using search engines are the two top uses of the internet. However, with all this legitimate user content also comes the temptation to wander onto ever more popular community websites or even online gambling websites. This rise in entertainment websites on the internet has spurred a recent rise in the need to monitor employee internet usage.

Should You Join the Masses and Monitor Your Employees?

This is an important question for any employer who allows the internet to be accessed by their employees. Before you answer that question you should ask yourself... will monitoring outbound internet activity solve a legitimate business need or do you just have an acute bout of paranoia.

If you are trying to convince your CEO/IT Manager/Employees that monitoring their internet usage is required, here are a few legitimate reasons for doing so.

• Maintaining records of email and internet transactions which could be used in dispute cases.
• Internal security, making sure that employees are not leaking company information on blogs etc.
• Ensuring company reputation and maintaining employee behaviour. Inappropriate behaviour can have a detrimental effect on business reputation.
• Increasing time is being wasted by employees surfing the internet.
  

So How Can You Implement Employee Monitoring?

First and foremost you should decide on your reasons for monitoring your employee internet usage and importantly get feedback from your employees as to what level of monitoring they would be comfortable with.

Clear guidelines are a must for this type of activity and of course they should be published to all employees in an open and honest way.

Your next task is to find an analytics application that can help you make sense of all your employee monitoring logs from ISA servers, Exchange servers and general proxy servers. Importantly it should allow you to have all the detail right down to a users clickstream through the internet per user session. This level of granularity will enable you to have detailed and accurate information, as well as the ability to have overall summary statistics.

SCL Analytics and Affinium NetInsight

At SCL Analytics we understand that different businesses have vastly varying requirements, especially when it comes to monitoring employee internet usage. This is why we offer Affinium NetInsight as a tool for SMEs and Enterprise level environments, with its ability to not only show you overall statistics on internet activity but also give you every level of detail you may require right down to a users clickstream.

To learn more about our proxy server analysis solution using Affinium NetInsight Click Here or you can also call us in the UK on 01293 403636.

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